My heart rises into my throat, and I swallow back tears. “I want this, Dad. I love Paul and I want to have a family with him.”
“And what about school? You have to promise me you won’t give up your dreams.”
“I have no intention of giving up anything. I can have it all with Paul’s help.”
He kisses my forehead. “Paul, can you go get my wife? We’re going out to celebrate.”
Paul hesitates. I can tell he doesn’t want to leave me alone, afraid my dad will say something to upset me. “It’s okay. I’ll be right out.”
Paul nods and leaves the room. Once he’s gone my dad says, “I know I seem like a hardass sometimes, and it’s hard to be affectionate, but I really do love you.”
I swallow back tears, my voice thick with emotion when I say, “I know. I love you, too.”
* * *
Three Months Later.
I’m finally walking down the aisle.
Not that aisle; I’m graduating. Friends and family pile into the university theater. The air conditioning is broken; people are sweaty and uncomfortable crammed inside the narrow seats. It’s a long ceremony and I was fairly certain if the valedictorian didn’t wrap things up he’d be heckled off stage.
Despite the grumpy atmosphere, I’m relieved. It’s been a long four years and a lot of hard work, but I’ve finally made it. The ceremony wraps up and the crowd roars as my graduating class throws our caps into the air.
In the mayhem I find Paul, my parents, and the rest of my family sitting near the back toward the exit. Once we finally make it out of the cluster-fuck of a parking lot, we meet up with Emily and her family at an Indian restaurant. Everyone in my family is giving me gifts. Paul just smirks, empty handed.
“What is that look for?” I ask him.
“You’ll see.”
I pick at my food. I’m not sure exactly what I ordered but I think the meat is goat. There’s also something with curry and yogurt. Every element on the plate has a mush consistency, and the smell is definitely not working for me. The one and only time I tried Indian food in the past, I enjoyed it—I didn’t know what I was eating then either, but it tasted good. Pregnancy has changed my sense of smell and taste. So far this baby inside of me seems to only like candy bars. That’s all I crave, and I’m his/her powerless servant. Luckily I have Paul around to make sure I have a balanced diet or it would be all sugar all the time.
“What do you mean, I’ll see?” I ask. “What will I see?”
My mom leans over and with an exaggerated *wink, wink* says, “He means you’ll see later tonight.”
“Ew, Mom, stop,” I said.
My dad is not amused. Though he seems happy for me and Paul and he didn’t protest when I moved into Paul’s gorgeous apartment, I don’t know if he’s fully on board yet with us as a couple. That will take time. Years maybe. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to see my child dating my best friend.
He frowns at my mom. “Yeah, Sharron, stop.”
My mom snorts and apologizes. She’s had one too many cocktails tonight.
It’s still fairly early when Paul and I leave the restaurant. This whole pregnancy thing is wearing me out and I’m hardly even showing yet. The only physical changes I’ve noticed is that my clothes don’t fit like they used to and my boobs are engorged.
There are plenty of other changes though. The big one, I started noticing after the nausea finally wore off, is pregnancy hormones. I’ve heard of expecting women having mood swings and cravings, but no one told me I would be horny as shit twenty-four/seven. Sometimes all it takes is for Paul to brush against me and I’m chasing him down, humping his leg. Seriously, though. All I want to do is fuck. Poor Paul is keeping up, but by the time the evening comes around, he’s wrecked.
“My feet are killing me. Can we go home now?” I ask him on the way to his truck. I lean my head against his shoulder and wraps his arm around me, his hand on my hip.
All I want to do is eat a big bowl of ice cream, watch a chick flick, and have sex until I drift off into dream land.
“Whatever you want,” he says.
As we drive away, we’re going in the opposite direction of the apartment. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“You’ll see.” He drives through town with that same smirk on his face. He’s up to something. Instead of pushing him about it, I lean my head against the window and watch the scenery whip by.
I see the sign for the freeway, and I deflate. I really hope he doesn’t plan to take me out of town for some kind of graduation surprise. My bladder is the size of a pea these days and car sickness is still an issue even if it’s not as bad as it was those first few weeks.
Instead of taking the freeway, he takes a left, into the old Victorian neighborhood. The sun is going down behind the cliffs. The steadfast homes that have been watching over this town from the cliffs for over a hundred years live to see another day. The speed limit through this neighborhood is forty, but he’s creeping through at a mere 25.
What in the hell is he doing?
I look over at the house of my dreams and realize there is no longer a for sale sign staked into the lawn. Someone has been hard at work fixing it up since I last saw it. There’s a new coat of paint, and all the little ginger bread details that were broken have been replaced. It’s stunning. I love the darker gray and the deep purple trim it’s been painted. It even looks like the new owners have put in double pane windows and a new lawn.
“I’m glad someone finally bought that house,” I say, looking at it longingly. “It deserves a good family.”
“Yes it does.”
He pulls into the driveway and parks. “I want to take a peek inside.”
When he starts to get out of the truck I say, “We can’t. Someone lives here now.” The porch light is on and everything.
He comes over to the passenger side and opens my door for me. “Yeah. We do.”
I sit for a moment, trying to make sense of his words. Like, what do those words even mean? I’m so confused I think I’m hearing things.”
“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” I say.
He laughs and takes my hand, helping me out of the truck. Removing a key and key ring from his chain, he says, “Welcome home, Rachael,” and hands it to me.
“Shut up. This is yours?” It’s impossible to contain my excitement. I know my voice has reached obnoxious levels, but I’m having a hard time policing my happiness. Curtains flutter as neighbors look out their windows.
“No, it’s ours. The place we are going to raise our baby and start our lives together.”
The tears start to fall. That’s another thing I seem to do a lot of lately: cry.
Inside smells like sawdust and fresh paint. It’s just as I imagined. Right when you walk in the front door, there’s a sweeping staircase and a massive chandelier hanging over it. Wood lace accents are in the corners, and everything is finished off with elaborate crown molding. The arched doorway to my right opens into a sitting room the size of my apartment. I go in there first. There’s a fireplace and furniture I recognize from Paul’s friends store. It’s decorated in an ocean theme with a lot of white and pale aqua colors as accents. I can’t imagine what it would cost to furnish a house like this.
The chairs and couches are made to look old in order to match the house, but have subtle modern details to keep it interesting and from looking like we stepped back in time.
Among the ship models, letters in bottles, and map paintings, is our baby’s ultrasound photo that has been blown up, framed, and hung on the wall as an art piece. I never would’ve thought to do something like that. It’s a good thing Paul decorated or I could’ve had this place looking like a school dorm in no time. It’s everything I could’ve wanted and so much more.
I wipe away the tears with the back of my sleeve. “I can’t believe this. You’re literally making all of my dreams come true. Could you be any more perfect?”
He shrugs. “Maybe. Come lo
ok at this view.”
He leads me to the back of the house, toward the sitting room. I step through the door and lose all of my cognitive abilities. I’m stunned. There are no words.
The entire back of the house is made of windows. In the corners are more of the wood lace details. Some of the windows curve like an old greenhouse so that I can see the sky above me as well. There’s a small fenced yard in back. Plenty of room for a garden, and playhouse when our child comes of age. The rest of the view is nothing but ocean. The sky is bright blue with low-hanging clouds of pure, fluffy white. In the distance there are sailboats and a charter boat. Farther from that is a shadow of an island. I can’t believe this is the view I’ll see every day when I come home from work. This is what I will get to look at while I’m feeding our child. I can definitely see myself here with my little family for the rest of my life.
“Let’s go upstairs. I want to show you our bedroom,” Paul says.
We go upstairs. There are more of those Victorian touches all over the house and the modern ones, too. We go into our room. There’s another wall with windows, but there are more modern gadgets and décor in here than there is in the rest of the house. Paul pushes a button on the wall and the drapes start to move from the center of the window to the walls in order to expose the view. In the bathroom, instead of the claw foot tubs I’d seen in the bathroom we passed by downstairs, there’s a Jacuzzi tub. That will be nice to sit in for hours, and there’s plenty of room to fit Paul and I comfortably should we decide to share a bath—which we most definitely will if I have anything to say about it.
All the furniture in the room is the stuff Paul bought me for the apartment. He must’ve cleaned the place out. I can’t say I’ll miss that place. At least here we can be as noisy in the bedroom as we’d like without getting the neighbors involved.
I’m standing at the window looking out when Paul comes up behind me. He wraps his arms around my waist and holds my growing baby belly. It doesn’t take much to get me started these days. Just the slightest touch from him can get me in the mood. Hell, even the wind blowing against my skin gets me in the mood most days. It’s almost as if my nerve endings grew nerve endings and they’re all on ecstasy. I’m experiencing new touches and feelings for the first time.
When he moves his hands beneath my shirt to touch the skin on my belly, I lean against him. My nipples are hard, almost aching, begging to be touched. My boobs have grown an entire cup size. Paul has seemed to make it his personal mission to fit the entire thing in his mouth like he had when they were smaller, but so far he hasn’t succeeded.
He brushes his thumb against the taut pink nubs, and that alone turns me into a puddle in his arms.
“I want you so bad right now,” I say. “Get naked.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says in a deep, breathy voice that drips with longing.
As soon as I hear the buckle on his jeans hit the floor, I turn to him and push him back onto the bed, helping him with his shoes and the rest of his clothing. I’m wearing a shirt and skirt, so I’m out of those in no time.
As much as I love foreplay, I’m beyond that point. There’s a deep craving inside of me. A need for this. Right now I’m a sex zombie and only having him inside me will stop the hunger.
He’s hard and ready for me. I hover over him until we’re in alignment, then sink down into him and feel the excruciating relief of having him inside me.
Not only are my breasts swollen, but so are my insides. The pillowy flesh of my canal clings to his shaft like a suction cup. Every time I rise up off of him, he lets out a sound that’s almost like a growl, then a long breath of relief when I sink back down.
“Fuck, you feel incredible,” he says as I ride him.
He holds his hands on my ass to regulate my speed. If it were up to me I’d be slamming myself onto him, but he’s afraid I’ll hurt myself and the baby—even though the doctor said sex (even the fast kind) is perfectly safe.
Still, even slow and steady is fine with me as long as he’s filling me up. I close my eyes and roll my head back, feeling more content than I ever have before. Though being pregnant at twenty-one isn’t exactly what I had in mind for my future, I wouldn’t change a thing. This is my happily ever after.
8
Paul
Three Months Later.
I never meant to fall in love with my best friend’s daughter. I’d never even been all that attracted to younger women before, and had only dated women my age. In fact, the one date I had gone on with someone younger than me—a twenty-five-year-old nursing student a friend of mine had set me up with—I found her to be a vapid, overly exaggerated blowup doll without two brain cells to rub together. I was truly afraid for those who may one day be in her care.
Then Rachael came along.
Of course I’d never thought of her in a sexual way before now. She was just my best friend’s cute kid. She was always bubbly and happy, and it was fun having her around, unlike some of the brats my friends had whelped.
Then she turned eighteen and suddenly—out of nowhere, it seemed—she’d become the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid my eyes on. I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell that happened and where was I during these changes? Not only was she stunning to look at, but she was hilarious, and sarcastic, and mature beyond her years. We could be silly and tell inappropriate jokes, or have deep, meaningful conversations that often led to me seeing the world just a little differently than I once had.
Even when she was sixteen and seventeen, she would flirt and I wouldn’t think much of it. She had a crush on an older man. These things happen. But as this continued into her adulthood, I was powerless to stop myself from flirting back. Sometimes even pushing to see how far she’d go. When I realized she would be willing to go all the way and this wasn’t just harmless flirting, my emotions started getting involved. I’d fallen for her. I wanted her more than I ever wanted anyone in my life.
That’s when I knew I had to leave. In less than a month, I sold my business and my home. I had to get as far away as possible. If I didn’t, I knew one day she would break my heart. She’d find some young kid who had more energy and was better looking than me. He wouldn’t have the laugh lines around his mouth and the crow’s feet around his eyes. Those are stupid, shallow things to be self-conscious about at my age, but I couldn’t help feeling that way around her.
I couldn’t bear to watch her fall in love with someone else, so I left.
It was supposed to be a new beginning. I went on dates, and found new hobbies, and got back into construction. I was supposed to make a full recovery from Rachael. Except, even after I moved, those feelings didn’t go away. They didn’t even lessen at all. If anything, they grew stronger because I didn’t have those moments of seeing her face to tide me over until the next time.
I was completely fucking miserable. For two whole years.
Then I got that text from her in the middle of the night and knew I couldn’t fight my feelings any longer.
Her dad had been asking me to make it to her surprise party for weeks, but I kept turning him down. But now that I knew she still wanted me, I had to see where this would go. It was the perfect excuse to come see her. I drove all night across the state, only stopping to caffeinate.
I never thought that text would lead to this. Us, in our new home, and Rachael carrying my child. And me with this diamond ring in my back pocket.
I’m nervous. Yes, we’re going to have a baby, but that doesn’t mean she’ll want to be stuck with me the rest of her life. She says she loves me, but I have a hard time believing she could possibly feel anything close to what I feel for her—that anyone has ever felt love like this before.
She stands in front of the windows in our room looking out at the ocean. It’s her favorite place in the house. We’ve been here three months already and it’s always where she can be found. It’s an overcast day and the clouds manage to make her skin look creamier than it already does.
She’s so beau
tiful with her long dark hair and big baby bump. There’s something I find incredibly sexy about pregnant women, but Rachael is the sexiest of them all.
I step up behind her and place my hands on her stomach, feeling my growing child moving beneath my fingers. I’m so full of love for the both of them I could burst.
She lets out a content sigh and leans against me. “Are you done for the day?” she asks.
I’ve spent the days finishing up the details on the house and making sure everything is perfect for when our child arrives so that I can dedicate all my time to my perfect little family.
I kiss her neck. “I am.”
She lets out a hot little moan. “Does this mean I have you all to myself now?”
“I’m all yours, but first I need to ask you something.”
I kneel before her. Her hands automatically go to her mouth and cover it. She knows what’s coming. My heart is racing and I hope to all that is holy that she doesn’t turn me down.
“Rachael Holt,” I say, my voice catching. I swallow. “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
Tears pour down her flushed cheeks. She lets out a quick sob and a burst of laughter. “Yes! Oh my god, yes.”
I slip the ring on her finger and stand, finding her lips. I lead her to the bed and gently lay her down. Piece by piece, her clothing is removed. I’m a visual creature and like to take my time exposing each stretch of pale skin. Sometimes my favorite part of sex is the view.
Once her panties are off, I kneel on the floor in front of her and spread her knees apart. My breathing grows heavy as I enter my middle finger into her. She makes the most adorable little sounds as I slide my finger in and out of her slick hole. The faces she makes—both focused and abandoned—are the most beautiful of their kind, like the rest of her.
Pushing my fingers apart inside her, I look inside the dark abyss, wishing I could crawl inside its silky warmth and live in there.
As I spread her wider, her rosy asshole twitches. My balls tighten against me as my arousal grows. I’ll need release soon or this could get uncomfortable.
Happily Ever After with My Dad’s Best Friend Page 8